Cover: Green Day returns to touring with small shows, including one in El Paso

Green Day probably wouldn't have considered performing here next week had singer Billie Joe Armstrong not experienced a 21st century breakdown on stage in Las Vegas.

But he did on Sept. 21, ranting about the band's short set time and smashing his guitar at the iHeartRadio Music Festival, just four days before the release of "¡Uno!," the first of three new albums the group would release in the last quarter of 2012.

Three days later, Armstrong entered a month-long outpatient treatment program for alcoholism and addiction to prescription medication for anxiety and insomnia.

Now, six months later, the band will take its first tentative steps back with three club dates, including a Wednesday show at Tricky Falls that sold out in a single minute, and its first appearance at Austin's South By Southwest festival on March 15. The tour kicks off Sunday in Pomona, Calif., and Monday in Tempe, Ariz.

Dubbed the "99 Revolutions" tour, the shows could be a way for singer-guitarist Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt, drummer Tré Cool and touring guitarist Jason White to shake off the rust, reconnect with fans and see how the newly clean frontman holds up before the launch of a long-delayed world tour commencing March 28 in Chicago.

Wednesday's show at Tricky Falls - which follows performances Sunday in Pomona, Calif., and Monday in Tempe, Ariz. - sold out in one minute, according Bobbie Welch, who owns the club with At the Drive-In guitarist Jim Ward and others.
"It's pretty exciting to have a band of that stature playing the club," Welch said.

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Though its gnarly, snotty-nosed punk made the Berkeley, Calif. trio a household name with its 10-million selling, Grammy Award-winning third album "Dookie" in 1994, it was 2004's ambitious "American Idiot," a post-9/11 protest album, that expanded the group's palette and elevated it to superstar status.

Green Day snagged two Grammy Awards, sold in excess of 5 million copies and was turned into a musical that ran for a year on Broadway in 2010. A touring version launched late in 2011.

It was in 2009, after the band released another politically motivated song cycle called "21st Century Breakdown," that Armstrong started his worst descent into alcoholism and addiction to medication.

"There were meltdowns on that tour that were huge," Armstrong, 41, told Rolling Stone recently, his first interview about what happened.

Things got worse last summer, when the band was mixing the new records — "&iexcl:Uno!," "&iexcl:Dos!" and "&iexcl:Tré!" — and began the grind of promoting them, including that notorious show in Las Vegas.

"We're known as a pretty tight band. He couldn't play guitar," Dirnt told Rolling Stone.

Armstrong referred to himself as a "functioning alcoholic" and "blackout drinker" who took prescription drugs for sleep and anxiety.

"I started combining them to a point where I didn't know what I was taking during the day and what I was taking at night," he told the magazine. "It was just this routine. My backpack sounded like a giant baby rattle (from all of the vials inside)."

His drinking dates back to the band's formative years in the late 1980s, when Green Day, its name a marijuana reference, fully embraced punk's nihilistic ethos. It got worse in the late '90s, when he decided before a gig in Austin to start drinking before going on stage.

"Sometimes, being a drunk, you think you can take on the whole world by yourself," said Armstrong, who's married with two teenage sons. "This was the last straw. I had no choices anymore."

"¡Uno!" came out Sept. 25. Armstrong was going through withdrawal at the time, and wasn't fully operational when "¡Dos!" was released Nov. 13. "¡Tré!" hit retailers on Dec. 11.

Club shows were the norm for before "Dookie" blew up nearly 20 years ago, but a rarity now for a band that routinely plays 20,000-seaters. With Armstrong out of circulation, the trio was forced to cancel shows scheduled for November through February.

The possibility of an El Paso gig came up a little more than a month ago, Welch said, as the band's agent looked to route a short club tour from the West Coast to Austin.

"We work a lot with Lane Arnold (of Dallas' Fastlane Productions). I've worked with him for years," Welch said. "He called me and said, 'Should we do this?' I said, 'Well, yeah!'"

The March 13 date had been confirmed early on, but there were several stops and starts before the show was announced. Most of the confusion was over the timing of the announcement and when tickets would go on sale.

"They were re-routing for I can't even remember how many weeks," Welch said.

About 1,400 tickets for the Tricky Falls show — at $51 a pop with a two-ticket limit — were snapped up in a minute on the Holdmyticket website, Welch said. Buyers must show proof of ID and wear a wristband to enter the club, starting at 6:30 p.m.

Next week's four shows will be Green Day's first with a newly clean frontman.

"We're going into this tour and making sure we do everything we can where everybody feels healthy, safe and happy," he told Rolling Stone. "We'll see what happens after that."

Doug Pullen may be reached at dpullen@elpasotimes.com; 915-546-6397. Read Pullen My Blog at elpasotimes.com/blogs. Follow him on Twitter at @dougpullen and Facebook at facebook.com/dougpulleneptimes.